Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Central Japan Railway’s huge
project to travel 286 km between Tokyo and Nagoya in 40 minutes in 2027 and 438
km between Tokyo and Osaka in one hour and seven minutes in 2045 started last December.
The total cost of this project is 9 trillion yen. The Linear Chuo Shinkansen
adopted the superconductive system for the first time in the world. The maximum
speed reaches 500 km/h. Because tunnels accounts for 86% of the Linear Chuo
Shinkansen line between Tokyo and Nagoya, various high-tech companies are
advancing their tunnel-related technologies to complete the line on schedule.

Enjoy the world of 500 km/h

Koken Boring Machine is a maker of
boring machines used for geological research. The mountainous region through
which the line travel has lots of high mountains, and it is hard to drill a
hole for geological research vertically. Koken’s technology to drill
horizontally is vital in this region. The company is developing a technology
for conducting survey 1 km ahead, while the current technology allows survey only
200-300 m ahead. It aims to establish a technology to control the location of
an iron pole 1 km ahead precisely.

The shield method is indispensable
to the engineering work in the urban area because it is hardly possible to use
dynamite. Obayashi developed a machine that can drill 25% faster than the
conventional model in alliance with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Mechatronics Systems. The new machine drills 500 m per month, two times faster than the
speed 20 years ago. Concurrently, Nippon Sharyo and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are trying to decrease the level of quake during traveling of the vehicle
they jointly developed to the quake of the latest Shinkansen vehicle N-700A. Tunnel
construction will start in full swing in 2016.